Chapter 4: This isn't Me

“I’ll need those essays by Friday,” Adrian reminded casually, glancing between them as if this were no different from any other interaction he’d had that day as he stood up to leave. “No extensions.”

Nyra groaned, muttering something under her breath, already reaching for her bag. Elara smiled faintly, more out of habit than response, but her attention had already drifted elsewhere.

She was watching his hands.

They moved easily as he adjusted the papers he was holding, fingers long and sure, nails trimmed short. There was something absentminded about the way he did it, like he didn’t need to think about where they went or how they moved.

Her stomach tightened before she could stop it, and she frowned slightly, annoyed at herself. It was strange how people could resemble each other so closely, how features repeated themselves in ways that felt almost intentional. His hands reminded her of her brother’s, not identical, but close enough to make her chest feel oddly tight, like a memory she hadn’t asked for pressing forward.

It was unsettling. Familiar in the wrong way.

“So,” Adrian said, already stepping back, clearly finished. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

And before she could think better of it, before she could decide whether the question even made sense, the words slipped out of her mouth.

“Professor Moore?”

“Yes?”

“Are you originally from here?”

The question sounded strange even to her ears, too personal for how little they knew each other, too out of place for the moment. Nyra turned to look at her, brow furrowing in quiet confusion.

Adrian raised an eyebrow, surprised, but he answered easily enough. “Yes. Born here. My great-grandparents migrated from England.”

“Oh,” Elara said, nodding quickly, as if that settled something. Or at least pretended to.

“Okay.”

She gave a small wave, abrupt and almost awkward. “See you.”

He smiled politely, nodded once to Nyra, and stepped away just as another professor approached him and drew him into conversation as they walked into the building.

Nyra waited until he was fully out of earshot before turning toward Elara, her expression somewhere between curiosity and disbelief.

“Why would you ask that?” she asked.

Elara shrugged, light and careless on the surface. “I don’t know.”

But she did.

Her family wasn’t from here. Not Pennsylvania, not England. Her father was Greek. Her mother Portuguese. There was no logical reason for her to be tracing lines between this man and her brother, no reason for her mind to be searching for origins or explanations.

And yet she couldn’t stop.

The resemblance unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. His face, his hands, the way he stood, the ease of him. It made no sense, just like the way her body reacted every time he was near her. The quiet flutter low in her stomach. The way her heart seemed to skip, her thoughts tangling into something unfocused and unfamiliar.

She had never felt that way around her brother. Of course she hadn’t.

So maybe that was it! Maybe her mind was confusing familiarity with attraction, mistaking something safe for something else entirely. Maybe it was because they looked so alike that her brain didn’t know where to place him, didn’t know which box he belonged in.

It was the only explanation she was willing to accept.

Elara and Nyra sat through their last class of the day together. She took notes. She answered when spoken to. She laughed at the right moments. From the outside, nothing was wrong.

But every quiet second stretched. Every pause filled itself with him.

After class, they ate dinner together like they sometimes did, talking about assignments, about a mutual friend, about something Nyra had seen online that morning. Elara nodded along, contributed when necessary, but she felt slightly removed from her own body, like she was walking half a step behind herself.

By the time she got back to her apartment, the air felt heavier.

Her evening routine was automatic. Shoes off by the door. Bag dropped on the chair. Lights dimmed. She washed her face slowly, watching her reflection blur and sharpen in the mirror as water ran over her skin. It was only then, hands braced on the sink, that she realised she’d been thinking about him again.

Not deliberately. Not consciously. Just… there. Like a background noise she couldn’t turn off.

She went to bed telling herself it would pass.

It didn’t.

She lay on her back, then her side, then her other side, sheets twisting around her legs as the minutes dragged on. Her body felt restless in a way she didn’t have language for, uncomfortable and warm and too aware of itself.

Her thoughts kept circling back, uninvited. His hands. His voice. The uncomfortable familiarity.

Eventually, she reached for a novel on her bedside table, more to give her mind something else to hold onto than because she wanted to read. The pages blurred together. She made it maybe fifteen minutes in before she stopped, breath shallow, the steamy scene in front of her suddenly unbearable for reasons she refused to examine too closely.

She shut the book and set it aside. It was supposed to be a distraction but it only made the internal heat worse.

Her body felt wrong now. Overstimulated. She shifted again, frustration blooming swirl in her belly and the incessant throbbing between her legs. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will herself into sleep, but the awareness only grew stronger, pooling low and insistent, demanding attention she didn’t want to give.

And then, without planning to, her fingers traveled down to the moist folds between her legs, imagining Adrian's long fingers doing the work.

Just once she touched herself…a quick, clumsy touch to relieve the pressure, to get it over with so she could finally sleep.

Her breath hitched.

A spark shot through her, sharp and sudden. Her hips jerked against her own hand before she could stop them.

Elara froze.

She lay perfectly still, heart thumping against her ribs, a faint heat spreading through her cheeks. That… shouldn't have happened. She never touched herself. It was a fact about herself as solid as her own name. She just didn't. It wasn't that she thought it was wrong; she didn't, not really. She'd just never felt the urge. Never seen the point.

Until now.

She stayed there for a moment, uncertain, the memory of that spark still tingling at the edges of her nerves. Her fingers hovered, trembling slightly over the hem of her shorts, caught between instinct and self-disgust.

This isn't me.

Her mind offered the thought clearly, but her body seemed to disagree, a deeper pulse starting to build inside her, slow and steady and undeniable. The need was still there, patient. Waiting.

She squeezed her eyes shut. "Stop it."

But the command felt weak.

Almost immediately, another image surfaced, unbidden: Adrian's fingers tracing over her skin, slow and deliberate, the way he'd seemed to know exactly where to touch her without ever touching her at all.

Her hand moved again, and his time, she didn't pull away.

Her fingers slid beneath the waistband of her shorts, hesitant at first, then more sure as they met the slick heat waiting for them. The contact sent another jolt through her, stronger this time. She gasped, hips arching off the bed as her mind went momentarily blank.

It felt… good. Unbearably, shamefully good.

She started to move, exploring with a clumsy urgency that was entirely new. Her breaths came faster, ragged in the quiet room. The tension inside her coiled tighter and tighter, a knot she didn't know how to undo but desperately needed to. Her other hand gripped the sheets, knuckles white.

Every instinct screamed at her to stop, to be horrified, but her body had a mind of its own now, chasing something it didn't understand. She was chasing too, lost in the rising tide of sensation, her mind a mess of half-formed images and desperate need.

Adrian's face.

His hazel eyes floating above her, staring into her soul as he flew her self approach the edge of a cliff that she was willing to fly off.

And then for a split second, those eyes weren't Adrian at all. No these were dark eyes and they were too familiar. Too close.

Her brother!

Elara jolted upright with a sharp gasp, throwing the covers off as if they were burning her skin. Her heart hammered violently, hands shaking as she pressed them into the mattress, breath coming too fast, too shallow.

“What the hell!” she whispered, horrified.

The room was the same; quiet, empty, and safe. But the thought lingered like a stain she couldn’t scrub out, leaving her cold and nauseous in its wake. She dragged a hand through her hair, fighting the urge to cry, to scream, to rewind the last thirty seconds of her own mind.

Why would he even be there? Why would her brain do that to her?

She sat there for a long moment, chest rising and falling, forcing herself to calm down. This was dangerous, she decided abruptly. Whatever this fixation was, whatever connection her mind was trying to make, it had gone somewhere it absolutely could not go.

It had to stop.

She lay back down, pulled the covers up carefully this time, as if they might betray her again if she moved too fast. Eyes closed. Jaw clenched. Thoughts shoved firmly away.

Sleep came eventually, not gently, but because she forced it to, and she paid for that with the horrible nightmares that wanted to drag her under.